Java EE (Java Enterprise Edition) General Discussion

I'm running an application using struts and I want to set a variable in the application scope when the applications first starts up. I'm imagining doing something like:

getServletContext().setAttribute(variable_name, variable_value);

Or, even easier, can I just set a value in an XML configuration file somewhere and have it appear in the application scope?

I want to put this value in the application scope only once -- not every time a request comes in to my web application. How do I do this?

Thanks,

Jon